Professor of history at the University of Buffalo and the State University of New York at Buffalo, 1926-1973; Chairman of the department, 1948-1967; alumnus of the University of Buffalo. Tape of an interview with Horton conducted by Brenda K. Shelton, October 3, 1978. Concerns his family history, student years, career as historian, faculty members, chair of Department of History, vews on education, people connected with the University, particularly Julius William Pratt.

Index: Interview with John T. Horton, October 3, 1978
00/000 UB curriculum in the 1920s and 1930s; honors program;
role of Goetz, Schauroth, Carpenter, and Capen.
08/189 Impact of veterans after World War II.
09/205 Experimental nature of early UB liberal arts program;
influence of Julian Park and Capen.
12/155 UB students during 1920s and 1930sa ethnic, class, and
educational backgrounds.
18/355 Remarks about Earl McGrath, Emily Webster and Philip
Becker Goetz.
22/406 General comments about early liberal arts faculty,
Wilfred Sherk and Carl Seigmund among them.
25/440 Mrs. Horton one of few women in UB law school
28/464 Women professors during Capen's tenure: Helen Dwight Reid,
Mme. Casassa, Ortha Wilner.
00/000 Anecdote about Wayne Jordon, leading into discussion of
Julius W. Pratt.
l0/231 Pratt as Chairman of History Department; formation of
History Club.
14/300 Pratt and Julian Park in sympathy with Capen's educational
Theories.
15/334 Members of History Department before and during Pratt's
Chairmanships: Julian Bark, Raymond Chambers, Wilfred
Kerr, Helen Dwight Reid, Augustus Hunt Shearer of the
Grosvenor Library, Barnet Nover (Buffalo Evening News
writer), Murdoch Dawley, John Clark Adams, Barton Bean,
Selig Adler,
20/400 Pratt as author and scholar.
Tape II
00/000 Horton's love of Latin; Pratt's educational background.
02/069 Pratt as scholar and teacher; his attitude toward history,
08/180 McCarthy years at UB; case of professor in Philosophy
Department [Parry]; role of Horton and Pratt in Executive
Committee that investigated the case.
13/2701911 request for scholarship funds from Buffalo Council;
words written by Dr. Roswell Park result in charges that
UB was anti-Catholic.
16/335"Continued animosity;" use of King .,James Bible in course
of Henry Ten Eyck Parry and Oscar Silverman leads to
Catholic objections; Capen defends the professors.
20/373 Feeling in 1930s and later that UB a nest of atheism;
and of communism; Horton's views; criticism of Nathaniel
Cantor; Capen and Pratt defend him.
25/436 UB Council members; social contacts between UB faculty
and Buffalo community; Julian Park.
26/465 Physical appearance of Dr. Pratt; family background and
early career.
Side II, Tape II
00/000 Pratt's family background; his marriage.

Interviewer's Observations:

Interviewer's Observations: John T. Horton, October 3, 1978
Although Dr. Horton's sight and hearing are poor, his mind
is alert and his memory is incredible. The interview took place
in his home, and when I arrived he asked me to pour each of us
a glass of sherry. During the course of the interview Dr.
Horton drank four glasses, and while he remained as rational and
articulate as ever, I feel that he may have become somewhat more
open toward the end. Mrs. Horton arrived home during the interview,
and I stopped the tape while we chatted. She then left
the room until the session was over.
I had known Dr. Horton while I was a graduate student at
the University of Buffalo. He remembered that I had been
Dr. Pratt's graduate assistant and that I had written my master's
thesis under his direction, and he insisted, both before the
taping began and during the intervals while I changed the tape,
that I, too, was a "source" for information about Pratt and
that my views should be expressed. Despite my objections, he
therefore interviewed me at a number of points. There seemed
no way to avoid this unfortunate development without annoying
Dr. Horton.

Transcript:

DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 1) Page "N Emeritus professor of History Interviewed by Brenda K. Shelton on October 3, 1978 JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: ... Should we make a few sounds to see whether it's ... We can start. This interview with Dr. John Horton is taking place at his home at 85 Woodward Avenue on October 3, 1978. The interviewer is Brenda Shelton at the University of Buffalo Archives. Dr. Horton, I enjoyed very much listening to the tapes you did early with Jenny Peterzell. You touched on a number of points that I wonder whether you would like to discuss in a little bit more detail. You were at the University of Buffalo in its very early days as a Liberal Arts School. What sort of curriculum was there? What requirements were there as an undergraduate? It was a highly structured curriculum. I can't remember all the details of it, but the electives were many fewer than they are today. Two foreign languages were required, one of which had to be Latin or Greek and the other, a modern language, usually French or German. Mathematics was required, at least a year of mathematics, a year of which I remember with sorrow and tears, but I finally surmounted that mathematical difficulty, at least enough to pass ... [laughs] . . . a course. A laboratory science was required. A freshman course in English was required. And so a laboratory science, mathematics, two foreign languages including one classical language, and English in the first two years. And one had to offer two languages upon entering-- two foreign languages. Then after the sophomore year, if one was .. made a good record, there was instituted what was called the Honors Course. And not all juniors were accepted for this, but certain juniors who had done very well in their first two years, and besides more advanced courses in English, in Greek or Latin and a modern language, and more mathematics or laboratory science if the students wanted it. There was a very interesting reading course which brought all of these so-called honors students together. Was this the Tutorial Program? It was, as I remember, at first, it was a group of students who met under various professors from time to time. For example, we read .. if we were reading Homer--I have to say in translation because few of us could read it in Greek--we met with Professor Schauroth and Professor Goetz. If it was something in history or political science, we met with a specialist in that department. If it was sociology, I remember sometimes we met with Dr. Niles Carpenter. And this was not in lieu, of course,--we still were taking advanced courses and majoring in whatever it was we wanted to major in. I was majoring in history and government. This Honors Course was separate from all of these other courses which 25 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 1) Page "N BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: constituted the major or the extra major requirements. How many years did this honors program continue? It ... it changed, as I recollect, about 1930. Dr. Capen doesn't seem to have been quite satisfied with the idea that some students should be in the Honors Course and get their B.A. with Honors and others should just graduate more or less as ... [pass men] ... though I think that's the way they do at Oxford and Cambridge. But he didn't particularly like that, so eventually the system changed so that all upper classmen, juniors and seniors, became tutorial students. Sometimes they were called Honors Students, but the phrase meant something a little different from what it had when I was an undergraduate. But in this change, an instructor or a professor would meet not more than two or three students, and sometimes just a single student at one time and the instructor and his tutorial students would pursue a course of reading in some chosen subject. And in our department, in due course, we worked out a reading program based on the theme of constancy and change in historical development and institutions. And we would, in the first semester, read what might be called classical works which threw light upon this subject. And then in the second semester, as I remember it, we read contemporary works which threw light on the same subject from a contemporary point of view. So, for example, we read Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia as an example of the idea, at least, if not the practice, of a planned society in Tudor times. And then we read contemporary works on the planned· society as of the 1930's. I remember one of the books we read was George ... [Sewald] ... The Planned Society and then as an antidote to it, Walter Lippman's The Great Society. And it was quite an interesting course and I think the students liked it. This system was injured by the great influx of veterans on the morrow of World War II. Now the reason for that was not the Veterans' fault. The Veterans furnished us some of the best students that we ever had. They were really a very superior group of students and could very readily have contributed to this system that I just described. And some of them did. We kept vestigial remnants of this, but the fact is the number of veterans was so great and the number of the faculty in proportion so small that we couldn't carry on that system as it had been carried on for years before. Julian Park writes in the earlier years of UB as an experimental school. He talks about the possibility of instituting pass-fail, for instance, as a marking system. Do you feel that the University in the twenties and thirties was an innovative, experimental college? Yes, I think that .. I think Julian Park is quite right on that score. You've heard of the famous course Great Books instituted at st. John's College? Well we had that without 26 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 1} Page "N BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: any trumpeted fame before we read things in this Honors Course when I was an undergraduate that clearly qualified as great books: Iliad, Odyssey. I remember one of the things that I read and I read it in the .. in German--not in Middle High German, but in modern German--the [Das Nieblehubenleit?] and we read some works of Plato and other great masters of thought and literature. And that was quite innovative. Did Dr. Capen encourage this kind of thing? Oh yes! Very decidedly. Very decidedly. What was your impression of Dr. Capen? Well my impression was ... well I became a freshman at the University the very autumn when he became Chancellor. And so I was just a freshman, he was a man in his forties of great reputation, and a remarkable port and presence. So my impression of him was one co-mingled of awe and admiration. He was ... from my point of view, he was an august figure. The University was very young when .. the Liberal Arts part of it was very young when you were in undergraduate school. The College of Liberal Arts was. Yes, yes. Were the .. can you make any comments about the students--where they came from, what kinds of young men and women they were? The overwhelming majority of the students came from Buffalo and Western New York. I would think that at least three quarters of them came from Buffalo. And the College of Arts and Sciences was called, therefore, the Streetcar College. I never liked that designation very well. I went to the campus on a streetcar o•o [laughs] ... and at certain times of the day, the streetcars would be crowded with students. It was pretty much local .. the student body was pretty much local. And they were students from middle class families in the main. The old and wealthy families from Buffalo were generally sending their sons and daughters to places like vassar or Wellesley or Smith or . . Harvard--the female college there. Radcliffe. Radcliffe. And their sons went .. oh, to places like Union College, Williams College, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Dartmouth, et cetera, et cetera. So that, I would say, the student body in the old College of Arts and Sciences was very middle class. It was far from being proletarian and it was equally far from being plutocratic. An Aristotelian [golden mean] .•. if you will, avoiding both extremes of the social spectrum. Did most of them come from certain public high schools? Lafayette, for example? Well, I would say that there was a pretty fair division of them. A good many came from Lafayette; a good many came from Masten Park; a good many came-- as I came- from Hutchinson 27 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 1) Page "N BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: Central; and well, I guess, Bennett wasn't in existence at .. in the early twenties. I forget just when Bennett opened. But in due course, many from Bennett. Those were the principle sources of supply for student body. And ethnically ... well, I'll use the expression-- ethnically they were almost exclusively lily· white. A fairly large proportion of them were of German descent, a considerable proportion of Yankee descent. At that time there weren't so many Poles in the student body as their were Italians or students of Italian descent. So ethnically, it was not the cross section that socially it was it was of the middle class. Some of the literature that went out during fund raising drives that Walter P. Cook instituted suggest that UB should be a means of Americanizing Buffalo as immigrant population. I gather that he was speaking specifically of Italians and Poles, but I gather there wasn't too much of this. Well, I'm sure that was one of their purposes and, no doubt, the college, to some extent, did serve that purpose. Well, as I say, there were quite a good many students of Italian extraction. I don't think there were, at that time in the 1920's when I was an undergraduate, very many students of Polish extraction. There was--I forgot to make mention of this--there was a very large contingent of Jewish students. The University had always been very hospitable to those people; and I would say that they were probably represented out of proportion to their numbers and the Poles were unrepresented. And then there was a scattering of other ethnic Europeans. But my impression is that the dominant groups were German and Yankee in their background. I think that .. my own view is that the high schools in Buffalo had done such a superb job of Americanizing students that all the University could have hoped to do in reality in that respect was to put a few finishing touches. Hutchinson Central High School, from which I was graduated, was really a melting pot except so far as Blacks were concerned. There were very few Blacks at Hutch when I was there and very few Blacks, I think, in any of the high schools at that time. But that was a long time ago--1920 .. in the 1920's. Did you know Earl McGrath as a ... ? Yes, I knew him quite well. I knew him very well indeed. Apparently he worked for a couple of years between high school and college. Was this a common thing? I beg pardon? Apparently he worked for a couple of years between high school and college. I didn't know that. Was this a common thing for college students to do? That I don't know. I know it was a very common thing for them to work holidays and summers toward paying tuition and 28 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 1) Page "'N BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: other college expenses. But whether it was common as it is now for a student to go to work for two or three years before he goes to college, I don't know. And I didn't know that Earl McGrath had done that. Now he represented ethnically the Irish group in Buffalo, though he was . . he was not typically Irish in the sense that he was Catholic. I don't think he professed much orthodox religion of any sort. He majored in German and was a first rate student, and very soon became the right hand man of Dr. Capen. This was long before the day of various Vice Presidents and Provosts, et cetera, et cetera. Dr. Capen has Earl McGrath as his Executive Aid and that was that [laughs] •.. And McGrath did a very good job. This reminds me of Emily Webster's career at the University. Apparently she graduated in 1923, I think, and immediately became Treasurer or Assistant to the Treasure. Did you know her at all? Oh yes. I know Emily Webster. We are old timers together. She .. my class was '26. Hers was '23. She was .. she majored in Latin and she and I share a great admiration for the then Chairman of the Classics Department, Philip Becker Goetz, who was from an old weal thy German family in Buffalo and a Harvard man. I think Emily reveres his memory and I do too. And Emily and I always had this common interest in Latin and common admiration for Philip Becker Goetz. And then, as you have just suggested, she became an Assistant to the Treasurer of the University, George Crofts, and in due course, became Assistant Treasurer and in due course again, was elected as an Alumna member of the Council of the University which was the corporate group which owned the University. Yes, she's had a distinguished career. You've spoken of Professor Goetz. He was from an old Buffalo family. Were many of the faculty drawn from Buffalo families? You, obviously ... Well, yes, but I was just a student until •.. Then you went on to become ... Then I went on to become an instructor in '26. I can think of several. Professor Wilfred Sherk who was the Chairman of the Department of Mathematics when I was an undergraduate, was of an old local family, I'm not sure whether Buffalo or the hither side of the Province of Ontario. But in this general region, belonged to the Sherk family which had ramifications on both sides of the Niagara Frontier. Some of the early faculty had been members of high school faculties in the very earliest days of the college. They were brought in part time to teach courses in the liberal arts to satisfy the American Medical Association that we were about the business of establishing a college. One of those was Carl Seigmund who had long been a German instructor, I think, at Lafayette High School. And I had him as an instructor in 29 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 1) Page "'N BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: German as an undergraduate at UB and he was a very good instructor. He ruled the roost with the discipline of a German schoolmaster, but you learned. And, he also had the nice talent of making it a pleasure to learn provided you did the right thing ... [laughs] ... I remember him with a good deal of affection. And there were others of that sort in the early days of the college. I assume that he and Professor Goetz and the others had no advanced degrees then in those early days. No. Philip Becker Goetz was B.A. Harvard. But what better could you ask ... [laughs] ... Your wife, I was very interested to learn, has a law degree from the University of Buffalo. That must have been a rather unusual accomplishment for a woman in the early 1920s. Yes, she got her Bachelor of Law degree in 1927, the year after I got my B.A. degree. And there weren't many women in her class, but she was not the only one by any means. I should think there might have been .. oh, perhaps ten women in that law class. Not more; and probably a ·few less, but I would say anywhere from seven to ten. So they were a very small minority, but they made it. Your wife did practice law--real estate law? Yes. Yes, and eventually, during the depression, she had a job with H.O.L.C. She resigned her job in the firm where she was and took this job in the H. o. L. c. And she remained in it until it was apparent that we were going to have a child and then .. well, I guess she stayed on for about a little while after our daughter was born, but not very long after that. So her legal career was not long, but it was fortunate and she thoroughly enjoyed it and she made a good success of it. You mentioned a woman professor when you were an undergraduate, Helen Dwight Reid. Yes. In those days we were the Department of History and Government. And she was appointed .. Dr. Capen did a great deal to recruit the faculty of Arts and Sciences himself, and I think he was the one who recruited Ms. Reid--Helen Louise Dwight Reid. She was a very engaging young woman. I forget what her undergraduate college was. It may have been Vassar. But she got her doctorate from Radcliffe in International Law, in a field of International Law called Servitudes. And I had her as an instructor when I was an undergraduate; and she did what we all did in those days-- we taught a variety of course in some of which we were not Ph.D. specialists. And she taught a course in the History of the British Empire which I took, and another course in Comparative Government, which I took. And I found her courses very interesting. She was at the University-- I forget for how many years--then she eventually left. And I think she taught for a while at Bryn Mawr and perhaps at Smith. I'm not sure about that. But eventually she went into the State Department and was about 30 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 1) Page "N to go on a mission for the State Department to South America. The day before she was to leave, she was killed in an automobile accident in Washington. BKS: Were there many women faculty members in the twenties and thirties? JTH: No, there were not many besides Ms. Reid. There was, in the Department of Romance Languages, Madame Casassa-- Monsieur and Madame Casassa were among the very early faculty of the college. They .. I think they had taught at Lafayette High School. And in the Department of Classics, Ms. Wilner-Ortha Wilner-- who was the daughter of an editorial writer for the old Buffalo Morning Express-- she was a member of the Classics Department. And I had a further course in Virgil from her, a very good course. She was also the coach of debating. And she was a good coach. I remember her with gratitude. I also remember her because she sent me out of class one day for disturbing the girl who was sitting in front of me [laughs] She said very [preemptorally] 'Mr. Horton, leave the room.' [laughs] ... End Tape 3, Side 1 31 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 2} Page "N Emeritus professor of History Interviewed by Brenda K. Shelton on October 3, 1978 JTH: BKS: JTH: ... are we on? Yes. What I have to say about Dr. Pratt .. I'll introduce it this way. Two or three years ago at one of their delightful dinner parties given by Dr. Frederick K. Heinrich and Mrs. Heinrich--Dr. Heinrich is in the Library, you probably know him. In the Lockwood Library--My wife and I met a very interesting couple, Wayne Jordan, and his wife, Agnes Andrews. Wayne Jordan is a man of exactly my age and he has had a very interesting career as a newspaper man, as a professor and as a Marine Corps Officer. And in the course of the last two or three years, he and I have been meeting every Monday afternoon--almost every Monday afternoon regularly--where we talk about politics, history, religion, and he sometimes brings a book to read a provocative passage from which sets us off into a very controversial and delightful conversation. And then after about two hours-- he comes about 2:00-- and then at 4:00, Mrs. Jordan comes and then she and my wife and Wayne and I join in a general conversation over drinks. Mrs. Jordan, who is something of a Francophile, calls these meetings the causerie ... [d'onde] ... and these causeries have been a joy to me for the last two years. Well, one day Wayne and I got to talking about Aaron Burr--I think this was a propos of Gore Vidal's imaginative volume on that subject--and naturally we fell into a discussion about the question of Aaron Burr's treason. And the next Monday Wayne brought a rather old issue of New York History and read a wonderfully lucid and masterful article which discussed all of the literature and the sources on the question of Aaron Burr's treason, and came to the conclusion that Aaron Burr was not only a traitor, but a liar and a scoundrel. Now this paper had been written by Julius W. Pratt whom, I think, Wayne Jordan never knew personally, but knew by reputation. And so, in that way, I introduced Will Pratt, who became Professor of American History and Chairman of the Department of History and Government in the fall of 1926, the same year when I became an instructor. And he remained Chairman of the Department until 1948 when he resigned because he had already for some time been the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and he had apparently got somewhat tired of riding both these horses at the same time. But from 1948 until his retirement ten year? later, he remained the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and also Samuel T. Capen, Professor of American History. Now I never had Dr. Pratt as a student, but as a graduate student, you had him and I think it would be a very 32 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 2) Page "'N BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: JTH: BKS: appropriate thing for you to record your experience and impressions of him as a graduate student. You wrote your M.A. thesis under his direction, if I'm not mistaken. Well do tell about that. You're a source for this aspect of the subject much more than I am. I wrote for him a recommendation which .. a number of years later, for him to become a visiting scholar and I remember trying to put into words what he had meant to me as a student and when he was my thesis advisor. He was a fine scholar who never indulged in theatrics--very quiet. And you could have heard a pin drop in his room always. Every one hung on every word. He spoke in a very low key way, but without a wasted word. His lectures proceeded in the most marvelously organized way, which didn't seem organized. It sounded as though it was the first time he'd ever said it; and yet, obviously he had been saying these same things for years and years. Very stimulating, the ideas he threw out always were the kind of ideas that would make students want to write papers on certain issues. He was one of the kindest men I've ever known--always considerate of people's personal needs. I'm afraid, in fact, sometimes people took advantage of it for this reason. He was always so kind about a student who had a personal problem. Working for him as his graduate assistant was a joy. I can believe it. He was .. He was very kindly and understanding but he was exacting, wasn't he? Oh very. Tell us about your M.A. thesis which you did under his direction, which was published as I remember it. Yes, it was on President Wilson's policy toward Russia during the First World War. Yes, he was very exacting. I went to Washington to do the research and he felt that this was a normal thing to do for a Master's thesis. I found out later it really wasn't--that many people do their master's theses under .. using the sources in the local library. He expected a great deal. He also expected a good deal in the way it was written. High literary standards. He was . . he was very precise in his use of the English language for which he had a high respect. In all the years that I knew him, conversed with him, or listened to lectures by him, I never heard him make a single grammatical error. Did you? Never. Never. I also never saw him in any way ruffled. No, he was imperturbable. Did you find that he had a sense of humor that sometimes was ... ... [puckish?] ... ... somewhat acerb? Yes. 33 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 2} Page "'N JTH: ... [laughs] ... There was salt. BKS: Yes. Very definitely. Tell me about your association with him as a colleague. JTH: Well, that began in the fall of 1926. And one of the first things that I remember is that he and I and some other members of the Department, and some members of the Economics Department were together for a dinner party~-this seems to have been a strictly stag occasion--and somebody ... [laughs] ... --you'll think Aaron Burr is on my mind--somebody raised a question about Aaron Burr. And Pratt answered this question without any pedantry, without any pompousness, very simply, quietly, but very thoroughly so that we all knew what the answer to that question was, which was a rather broad question that took in a number of aspects of Burr's famous but somewhat lamentable career. I think that was really the first recollection I have of him as of the autumn of 1926. He and his wife, Louisa Williamson Pratt, lived at that time in this neighborhood on Parkside Avenue about Russell. But later they moved to 65 [Emmond] Street, Williamsville, and that's where they were living when you became acquainted with Will years later. And there they lived until they left Buffalo after Will retired from professional practice. I remember him, of course, as Chairman of the Department. He managed the Department without any fuss, with what seemed to me to be equity and fair play and he managed to make a social unit of it. For example, we got into the habit of meeting every week for lunch. And it might be of passing interest to know where first we met. At this time there was no student union or really any place on the campus itself where you could eat unless you brought your lunch in a brown bag. But there was a very good restaurant on Main Street. Do you know where the Trico Plant is? BKS: Yes. JTH: Right across from the Trico Plant. The building is still there. This was Mrs. Coker's Restaurant. And her restaurant was downstairs. And we got a very good meal. If I may indulge in pleasant thoughts about the table, we would get soup, meat, potatoes, salad, cake, pie, coffee and we paid less than a dollar. Those were the good old days [laughs] ... Well, we met there every week and then after what is now Harriman Hall was built, but then called Norton Hall, there was a very attractive dining room upstairs and we met there year after year. If there was any business that the department needed to attend to, Will brought it up and it was dispatched. But we met for a social occasion every week whether there was any business or not. And I always thought that was a very nice feature of departmental life. It continued for years throughout the time of Pratt's Chairmanship and on into mine. But in the latter days 34 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 2) Page "N BKS: JTH: apparently that close collegial feeling tended to evaporate as the department got bigger and people pursued their own interests--what shall I say?--with more and more affinity. Another interesting thing when Pratt was Chairman, was the fostering by him of a history club. Had that club .. was that club still in existence when you were a graduate student? I don't remember. That club met about once a month, and it was more a social occasion than anything else though usually somebody gave a talk. Sometimes we met down in the refectory of the Grosvenor Library and sometimes we met after it was built, in Norton Union--the old Norton Union, now Harriman--and alumni came back year after year and I think it was an occasion that everybody enjoyed. But that custom did survive Pratt's Chairmanship for some years, but it's now quite gone like the foam on the fountain, the dew on the mountain. Pratt was very much interested in Capen's ideas and if there was any professor in the faculty who was more vigorous in carrying them out, I don't know who it could have been. Equally so, was Dean Julian Park, who was also a member of the Department of History. So that between the Dean and the Chairman of the Department, the Department of History and Government was really devoted to Capen's views and practices and, as I indicated a while ago, there was a good deal of fidelity to their principle in practice during Pratt's Chairmanship and for years later. And one thing that he did that I think was of great interest to all of the tutorial students was to bring .. each member of the department had tutorial students of his own, and he might meet them one at a time or never more than two or three at a time--until the influx of the veterans made this impractical. Pratt, from time to time, I can't say it would be once a month, but at intervals, he would bring all of the tutors and all of the tutorial students together for a general confabulation on appointed texts. And the discussions were lively and interesting and first rate. I remember them with a good deal of pleasure and I think other old timers would. Now what else should I say about Will Pratt as Chairman? Well, I think I may have mentioned to Ms. Peterzell the members of the department were here when Pratt came in the fall of 1926. I'll run over them. First, there was Julian Park who was the Senior Professor; Raymond Chambers who joined the Department about 1922, I think the same fall that Capen was inaugurated Chancellor. He was a Northwestern man with a Harvard Ph.D. Wilfred B. Kerr who was a Canadian who had served in the First World War and had got his M.A. afterwards at Oxford and then his Ph.D. in Toronto. That was Kerr, Chambers, Park ... on the Political Science side, Ms. Reid. Augustus Hunt Shearer, the librarian who put at the Department the disposal of the Grosvenor Library--all of its riches he put at our disposal and we 35 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 2) Page "N couldn't have done work worth a tinker's damn at that time on the strength of the University Library which was inconsequential. But Shearer and Pratt worked out an arrangement by which the Grosvenor Library was at the disposal of the History and Government .. they had big reserve shelves for us down there. Our students did more studying down there, I think, than anywhere else. So he was a member of the Department part time. Then Pratt added to the Department a very interesting man, who for years, wrote an informed and fascinating column on International Affairs in the Buffalo Evening News. His name was Barnett Nover. He had gone by the time you came to Buffalo. He was a member of the Department and he always met with us at Mrs. Coker's Restaurant. And he kept his interest in the Department and gave a course there every year until he left the Buffalo Evening News and went to Washington, DC. He's now deceased. Then, when Ms. Reid departed, Pratt appointed a very capable young man named Murdoch Dawley, who was on the Political Science side for oh, perhaps two or three years, but departed from us to go to get a better paying job at Fredonia State, where he has had a long and interesting career. Then, Pratt added a man who had his, I think, his doctorate from Northwestern in Political Science, John Clark Adams, who remained throughout the Pratt regime. And then an instructor named Barton Bean who was an interesting and clever young man. I would say that Pratt's most enduring appointment was that of Selig Adler who, like myself, is an alumnus of the University Buffalo and from Buffalo he went to the University of Illinois where, in due course, he got his Ph.D., returned to Buffalo and was teaching, I think, in the Grover Cleveland High School. He met Pratt and Pratt, with his usual good judgment, sized him up as a man who ought to be in the faculty of the Department of History and Government. And so Selig Adler joined and has had a distinguished career and in a sense is a successor to Pratt because he is, as Pratt was, a Samuel P. Capen Professor of American History, and in some other ways, he has followed in the tradition of Pratt by having a great and scholarly interest in diplomatic history as well as other fields. And I would say that was Pratt's most brilliant appointment. So the Department grew under Pratt, but with the limited funds at the disposal of the University of Buffalo in those days, it ... it didn't grow to any great size and it couldn't-- there were just not the resources. But perhaps I speak too much from the prejudices of an old timer. Small as we were, we were damn good! We did a job of teaching which was very superior. Pratt was an accomplished research scholar as you know [?] I couldn't begin to tell you how many learned articles he wrote, but books. The Expansionists of 1812 which he had written before he came here, and which had been praised by 36 DR. JOHN T. HORTON (Tape 3, Side 2) Page "N Charles A. Beard in his Rise of American Civilization: the masterful researches of Julius W. Pratt have showed so and so. Well that book now has some modifications have been made in the thesis, but it was a brilliant book. Then The Expansionists of 1898; American's Colonial Experiment; The Diplomatic History of the United States, which has now gone through several editions and is widely used throughout academia wherever diplomatic history is taught; and then his last work, the full ... [dressed] ... biography of .•. BKS: . • • [Cordell Hull] .. . JTH: Cordell Hull. Now I mention these things. There seems to be a feeling abroad today in many quarters, that you're either a research scholar or a teacher. You can't be both. Pratt was a first rate research scholar. This was recognized by the profession far and wide. He was a superb teacher. You've borne testimony to that better than I can because I never formally took a course from him, but after I came back from Harvard, I did audit his course called nNew Viewpoints in American History" and everything that you say, I can corroborate. You could have heard a pin drop. Now that was not a graduate course. That was undergraduate. It was a big course. It was taught many years on the third floor in that big lecture room in Crosby Hall. And as you say, Pratt did not have a loud voice. He had a rather low voice, but he knew how to project it so that he could be heard without effort by students in the back row of that big room. And he developed this course, "New Viewpoints in American History" and I remember the first lecture in it that I heard. He began by quoting Lincoln [Stefans] ... to the effect, when he went to college he thought history would be cut and dried, it was all in the text book and then he began to find that some of the things in the text book weren't true. And Pratt developed this theme in that first lecture, pointing out that you, the students, you have a chance to add something to history by modifying some of the traditional views which were sound in their time but further research and scholarship have proved to be erroneous. He was a superb teacher of undergraduates as well as of [under]graduates and I know that from auditing. I audited this course of his for a year. So he combined both the learning of a great scholar and the skill of a great teacher ... End of Tape 3, Side 2 37